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About
once every five years, the maharadja of Mysore used to round up wild elephants
from his jungles, in order to have them tamed and used for ceremonies or
logging work. This operation took several months and involved thousands
of hunters and several hundred tame elephants. It climaxed when the wild
elephants were driven, one by one, into a wooden stockade (called kheddah),
where some of their tamed and trained fellow creatures helped to immobilize
and rope them. For the maharadja, this was a kind of celebration, to which
he invited his friends of the international jet set. Not being part of this,
I couldn't obtain an invitation, but had to smuggle myself in and spend
the nights in the jungle with the native hunters. Nevertheless I got a story
that was published by magazines all over the world and that is still of
some interest, inasmuch as this event turned out to be the last of its kind:
in the following years, the maharadja was dispossessed of his kingdom, most
of his forests were destroyed and the wild elephants were deprived of their
habitat. |
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